In article ,
Doug Miller wrote:

Mmmm-hmmm. About fifteen years ago, I was at a computer conference where a
handful of guys from New York City, about my age and doing the same kind of
work, were bragging about their high salaries (about 75% higher than mine).
Finally, I'd had enough. I asked the biggest loudmouth how much his house
payment was. Seems he doesn't *have* a house... he's paying $1200/month for a
750-sf apartment.

So I described where I lived at the time: rural area 15 minutes outside
Indianapolis, 1700-sf 2-story farmhouse with 2-car garage and 2000-sf 2-story
barn on nine acres of land including a fenced pasture where we kept our own
horses, little over a mile from an interstate on-ramp, 25-minute highway
commute to work, 35-40 minutes from the center of downtown.

How much, I asked, would that cost in New York?

$800K, the guy answered, to be immediately corrected by his friends: "never
mind the house, the land alone is worth over a million" - "*two* million" said
another - "IF you could even find it, that close to the city" said a third.
Spirited debate ensued among the New Yorkers. They finally concluded that such
a property, if it existed in the NYC area, might be worth $2.5 to $3M.

I said, "I paid eighty thousand."

I didn't hear anything more about high NYC salaries the rest of the week. :-)


Certainly your property sounds very nice, but consider that those guys
could probably afford to buy your house *and* live in NYC. One nice thing
about having a high salary, even when living in an expensive area (or
nation) is that one can put those dollars to work elsewhere. Lots of times
that happens at retirement. You might wonder if 'putting up with NYC'
is worth the 30 years of hassle, even if the payoff in the end is higher,
but there are lots of things one can find in NYC that one will not find in
rural Indiana. It depends on what is important to you. Not too many people
raise horses in NYC, but there aren't too many Broadway shows in
Indianapolis, for instance.


Dimitri